


The Caganer Conundrum

by JustARandomIdiot



Category: Story Thieves Series - James Riley
Genre: Comedy, Friendship, Funny, Gen, Humor, this has crackfic energy but its not a crackfic im sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:35:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28541901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustARandomIdiot/pseuds/JustARandomIdiot
Summary: When Kara finds out what the Caganer is, she enlists the help of Orion and Kiel in order to figure out how this weird tradition started! Well, Kiel is more willing to help than Orion, but he's still there!Inspired by the CAGANER route from Monster Prom.
Relationships: Kara Dox & Kiel Gnomenfoot, Orion | Kid Twilight & Kara Dox, Orion | Kid Twilight & Kara Dox & Kiel Gnomenfoot, Orion | Kid Twilight & Kiel Gnomenfoot
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	The Caganer Conundrum

**Author's Note:**

> I can't say this is a serious fic, but it's not a crackfic.
> 
> I really don't know why I wrote this. I was playing Monster Prom and I got the CAGANER ending and then my brain went "What if that route but Kiel, Kara, and Orion???" and then this fic happened. I hope this gets a laugh out of you guys, at least.
> 
> Before you ask, yes the Caganer is a real thing. No, I'm not joking. I thought it was fake, too, just for Monster Prom, then I found out it actually exists.

“Guys, I just found out the _craziest_ thing!” Kara exclaimed at the two boys with her, a laptop sitting on her lap.

The three of them were hanging out in the house that Kiel had created a while back in the nonfictional world, which was a nice place to be when you didn’t want the world to bother you. It was literally in the middle of the woods, which meant peace and quiet. Also, thanks to the magic, there was the best wifi service anyone could get, which was part of what led Kara to this point in her life.

“Crazier than any of Kiel’s ideas?” Orion asked, not looking up from his phone.

Kiel just winked. “There’s no way anything could be crazier! My ideas are just the craziest!”

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

“Thank you!”

Orion rolled his eyes, going back to whatever he was doing on his phone.

“Okay, so you guys know what the Nativity set is, right?” Kara continued, rereading the Wikipedia article quickly. It was still so _hard_ to believe she was reading this right.

“Is that one of those icky-yeah stuff you build?” Kiel asked.

“ _Ikea_ ,” Orion corrected him. “And no, the Nativity set is the thing that represents Jesus’ birth.”

“Oh, one of the nonfictional religion things?”

“Yup.”

“I never understood nonfictional religions,” Kiel continued. “Like, they tell me that magic isn’t real here, but then they believe in these people who control lightning and hold thunderbolts, or have blue skin and a lot of arms, or die for three days before they’re fine again.”

“Look, this kind of stuff is important to a lot of people,” Orion said. “You just gotta respect it even if you don’t agree.”

“I’m not saying they _can’t_ believe this stuff,” Kiel defended, raising his hands up. “But why would they say magic doesn’t exist then go and say _these_ people do? How is any of that not magic?”

“I dunno,” Kara answered. “Personally, I don’t know if there are any gods out there, but if there are, they definitely hate me.”

Wait, why were they talking about religion? She wanted to say something before they got to this subject. What was it? Oh yeah!

“Anyway, so back to the Nativity set thing. So in the Nativity set, there’s Mary, Joseph, shepherds, wise men, sheep, and Baby Jesus, right? Apparently, in a region in Spain, they add this other guy called the…” 

She paused momentarily, slowly reading the pronunciation. 

“...kuh-guh-nay. Yeah, Caganer. And like, that apparently translates to ‘The Pooper’.”

She now had Orion’s and Kiel’s full attention.

“Please don’t tell me…” Orion began.

“It’s a figure of a guy pooping that they put near the Nativity set.”

Silence. Honestly, Kara couldn’t blame them. She herself didn’t really know what to make of that information.

Orion was the first to break the silence. “First of all, what the frick?! Second of all, how’d you even get to that?!”

“Uh…” How _did_ she end up on the Wikipedia page about a small figurine of a guy pooping that some people placed near a Nativity set? Well, she wanted to look up when worms on a string were invented, and then… yeah, the past who knows how long was kind of a blur.

She just shrugged in response. That was a very weird Wikipedia rabbit hole she went down, honestly.

“Wait, let me see,” Kiel said, getting up from the floor and looking at the computer over Kara’s shoulder.

“I thought you couldn’t read English?” Kara pointed out.

Kiel winked. “Not a word. But I want to see the pooping guy!”

“Here.” She scrolled up a bit, showing him the photo of the Caganer that Wikipedia provided.

“They put _that_ next to Baby Jesus?!” Orion said from behind her. Huh. She didn’t notice when he got up.

“Apparently.”

Orion shook his head. “That can’t be real,” he said. “No, that can’t be true. Someone just made up this whole thing.”

Kara turned to him, an eyebrow raised. “Are you doubting Wikipedia, one of the most reliable sources on the internet?” she asked him.

Orion just stared at her, no amusement on his face.

“Come on, Rye, when has Wikipedia ever been wrong?” Kiel asked with another wink, nudging him with his elbow.

“Don’t call me that,” Orion told Kiel. “And Kara just… I don’t know, look at another website for this thing, I seriously don’t believe this is actually a thing.”

Kara rolled her eyes. “Fine, whatever you say.” Typical of him to not believe any outlandish thing like a guy pooping next to Baby Jesus in the Nativity set when Jupiter City had people who could fly and have laser eyes and whatever other superhero powers they had in that world. Yet the Caganer he didn’t believe?

She opened up a new tab and went to Google, typing “caganer” in the search bar. The first link that showed up that wasn’t Wikipedia was an entire website dedicated to selling Caganers but of different people. 

Of course, the website was in Spanish, and Kara had no idea how to read Spanish, but seeing the visuals was more than enough for her. Some were other fictional characters she recognized, like Miguel from Coco or Maleficent from Disney. Others were real people, like, historical figures and _actual politicians_ , which was. Very uncomfortable. Then a couple were just generic figures of people pooping.

“I’m done,” Orion stated, getting up and walking away to the far side of the room. “This is actually real. I’m just… I can’t. I just can’t right now.”

“You know, I’d like to see a Caganer me,” Kiel said as Kara continued scrolling through the website. “Just imagine how it’d look!”

“No, I _don’t_ want to imagine that,” Orion said loudly from the other side of the room. “I don’t even _want_ that image in my—” He cut himself off, pausing for a brief moment before loudly swearing. “Thanks a lot, Kiel, now I can’t get that out of my head!”

Kiel winked. “You’re welcome!”

“Well, at least you now know for sure that it’s real!” Kara called out to him with a smile.

Orion groaned. “I could’ve gone the rest of my life not knowing about this Caganer thing. Now I have to live with this knowledge.”

“And isn’t your life so much better now?”

“ _No_. Who’s the weirdo who even thought to make this thing?!”

“Hmm… There’s a section about its origins on the Wikipedia page.”

“Even if I say not to, you’re gonna read it to me, aren’t you?”

“Yup!”

She could practically feel Orion rolling his eyes, she didn’t have to look at him to know. 

“Okay, so according to Wikipedia…” Wait, what? “Uh, ‘the exact origin is unknown’.” Come on, was this for real? That was disappointing.

Orion stared at her incredulously. “Seriously? They don’t even know why they started putting a figure of a pooping guy?”

Kiel sighed dramatically behind her. “Unfortunately, Wikipedia never lies,” he said.

“I mean, there’s a bit more on here,” Kara told them. “Apparently there’s a society called Friends of the Caganer that believes the tradition started in the 17th or 18th century.”

“Hey, let’s join them!” Kiel suggested enthusiastically.

“Heck yeah!”

“ _No_ ,” Orion quickly retorted. “We are _not_ doing that.”

“Ugh, party pooper.” She didn’t even notice that accidental pun until she said it, smiling when she realized the words that came out of her mouth.

Orion just ignored that.“But is that really all it has about its origins?” He was now walking back to them. Obviously annoyed, but given that he was coming back, clearly he had _some_ interest in this. 

Kara almost smirked at that.

“Well, there’s not much more in the origins, but there’s some theories under the Explanations part as to why it’s there.”

Orion looked over her other shoulder, reading with her some of the possible explanations for the Caganer: fertilizing the Earth, being symbolic of how the Almighty was brought down to the most humble beginnings, something representing social issues, but no satisfying explanation as to _how_ or _why_ it started.

“I hate that I’m invested in this,” Orion spoke, stepping back. “Why am I invested?! Why do I want to know how this stupid thing started?!”

“Because why not?” Kiel countered with a wink. “This is probably the greatest mystery unsolved!”

“It’s not. Besides, I don’t care about how other traditions started, I don’t get why I care about literally the _stupidest_ one out there.”

“Because no other tradition has a person pooping next to Baby Jesus!” Kara pointed out, closing her laptop. “So let’s get to the… _bottom_ of this mystery!”

She snickered at her own pun, Kiel cracking up as he fell to the floor laughing. Orion just looked at her, unamused.

“I hate you.”

“Love ya, too!”

It took about a minute for Kiel to calm down, though he was still grinning widely when he was done laughing. “So Mystery Trio time?” he asked, his eyes lighting up.

Kara smiled back, nodding her head vigorously. “Mystery Trio time!”

“I’m not joining this,” Orion just said, crossing his arms.

“Okay then, Mystery Duo plus Orion!”

“Mystery Duo plus Orion!”

“Why do I hang out with you guys…”

“All right then, Mystery Duo plus Orion,” Kiel announced to them.

“That is the dumbest name ever.”

Kiel just continued, ignoring Orion’s remark. “First order of business: figuring out how we can solve this Caganer mystery! Any ideas?”

Kara quickly raised her hand. “I have one!”

“If you’re suggesting we travel to the time of Jesus’ birth and poop near there, we’re not doing that,” Orion told her.

“But—”

“ _No_.”

She huffed. “Fine. Then maybe—”

“We are also _not_ going to do a modern reenactment where we poop next to a woman giving birth.”

“How about—”

“Other people aren’t pooping for us either. _No. Pooping._ ”

_Come on!_ Kara groaned, throwing her hands up in frustration. “Then I’m all out of ideas.” As much as she loved him, Orion could really be such a killjoy sometimes.

Kiel just winked like he always did. “Well, _I_ have an idea!” he told the two of them proudly.

“It’d better not involve pooping in any way…” Orion started.

“Don’t worry, it doesn’t! I promise!”

* * *

This was illegal.

What they were doing was _very_ illegal.

There may have been differences between Jupiter City and the nonfictional world, but one thing they shared in common was that this could definitely land them in jail. What would Christian even think about this?! Would he be angry? Or worse, disappointed?! Orion was supposed to be a superhero sidekick, he was supposed to be a law-abiding citizen, not breaking rules unless they were unjust or it was necessary. He was too young for jail, he couldn’t—

“Would you relax?” Kara told him, lightly slapping him on his arm. “It’s not like we killed anybody.”

They didn’t. But that didn’t make this any less illegal. “We got onto a flight to Bethlehem illegally!” he hissed to her, low enough so the other passengers couldn’t hear over their own chatting.

“Hey, we paid for the tickets!”

“ _We forged fake passports!_ ”

“They weren’t _forged_ , they were _magicked_!” Kiel corrected him from the window seat. “If they were forged, we wouldn’t have been able to get on this pain!”

“Plane.”

“Same difference.”

Orion didn’t understand how Kiel even did that, given that he was under the impression that Kiel had given up his magic, if what Bethany read from the _Story Thieves_ series that documented their adventures was accurate. Either he turned those notebooks into actual passports for them, or they were just illusions that made the notebooks look and function like real passports, but either way, they were made illegally.

Kara and Kiel just continued talking to each other, as if they weren’t just doing something illegal.

“Dude, why are you looking out the window now, we haven’t taken off yet.”

“Because windows are cool! And I wanna see what kind of magic they use to make this thing fly!”

They were gonna get caught.

“It’s science, not magic.”

“Well, if you ever read my books, you’ll know that magic came from science, so technically it _is_ magic!”

“Eh, fair enough.”

They were gonna get caught and kicked off the flight and probably sent to jail all because of a stupid figurine pooping next to the Nativity set. They’d be banned from every flight and—

“Is something wrong, sir?” a flight attendant asked him with concern.

Orion felt his mouth go dry. “Uh…”

“He’s just nervous since he’s never flown on a plane before,” Kara told the flight attendant with no hesitation.

Orion glared at her. He _had_ flown on a plane before, she knew that. It’s just that before, he’d gotten on the plane in a _legal_ way.

The flight attendant just smiled sweetly at him. “Oh, don’t be embarrassed,” she told him. “Most people haven’t traveled by plane before. It _can_ be a little scary, given some of the dangers, but it’s not so bad!”

“T-Thanks…” Orion mumbled, not sure what to say. He obviously couldn’t tell her the truth of how they got on, they’d just get in trouble.

“The captain should be taking off soon,” the flight attendant said. “I have to go for now, but I can check on you later during the flight, okay?”

Orion didn’t even get the chance to respond before she walked back somewhere to the front of the plane. And within the next few minutes, he felt the plane beginning to roll down the runway, then lift into the air.

It was official. They were on their way to Bethlehem to “solve” the mystery of the Caganer’s origins. No turning back.

The next fourteen hours of the flight were fairly uneventful, minus the flight attendant from earlier checking in on him a couple times and coming to shush Kara and Kiel more than five times. (The two of them had managed to start a food fight during dinner, and Orion was pretty sure that 95% of Kara’s trips to the bathroom were just to move around instead of actually needing to use the bathroom.)

Those stressful hours couldn’t end soon enough, even with his attempts to sleep through it all, but Orion never felt more relief when the plane landed. They made it. Most of the way, at least. There was still a bit more airport security to go through, given that they had traveled to another country.

Which thankfully went smoother than he thought. They didn’t have much packed, and once again, their “passports” were accepted, somehow. Didn’t make Orion feel any better, but they managed to take a flight to another country with fake passports. 

Probably best not to mention it to the others.

Kara led their small group of three out of the airport with a smile, hands on her hip with determination. “Ah, yes! The birthplace of Jesus!” she said, taking in a deep breath. “Smells biblical!”

Kiel took in a deep breath as well, furrowing his brows as he did. “It… doesn’t really smell that different from Owen’s and Bethany’s town. It just… smells like air in a town.”

Looking around, Orion could really tell there was history to the town. Probably would’ve been cool to walk around and check out the place. If it weren’t for Kara’s and Kiel’s dumb quest. Maybe another time, with a more legal way to get to the place, of course.

God, this could’ve been a nice trip. This really could’ve.

“So what’s your plan for solving this Caganer conundrum?” Kara asked the magician.

Kiel opened his mouth to answer, but Orion cut him off before he could say a word.

“This better not involve poop or pooping in some way,” he told him. Honestly, he was sure that if he hadn’t interjected, he would’ve ended up regretting this trip more.

“There goes my first idea,” Kiel mumbled.

Oh God, Orion did _not_ want to know what that original idea was.

Unfortunately, Kiel wasn’t one to mourn shot down ideas for long. “Luckily, I have a back up plan,” he said, perking up again as he winked, “which I thought of in case Orion said ‘no’!”

Orion narrowed his eyes. “Am I gonna say ‘no’ to this idea, too?”

Kiel shook his head with a grin. “Don’t worry! No poop! Promise!”

Orion sighed, crossing his arms. Didn’t actually let him know if he was going to say “no” or not, but he let Kiel explain his plan.

“Okay, so Jesus was born somewhere here or something, right? And I’m assuming that he was born at _least_ ten years ago, maybe twenty years ago. Something like that, I just know it was a long time ago.

“Well, from what I’ve learned about the nonfictional world and your guys’ worlds, a lot of buildings have cameras by them, and I don’t really get how they work, but if we find the oldest building, the camera on it will be sure to have seen Jesus’ birth! Then we can see if a guy was pooping nearby and get closer to figuring out the Caganer!”

Orion was very familiar with the feeling of wanting to slap Kiel for his stupidity, but never had it been as strong as it was at this moment. Was this how Charm constantly felt? It was a wonder she was even able to put up with this, honestly.

“Kiel, you genius!” Kara exclaimed, her blue eyes shining with excitement as her smile grew wider.

“Wait, hold on!” Orion interjected before the three of them could go anywhere. “Can we think about this for a minute?”

“Yeah, I already did,” Kiel answered. “Like, several minutes, actually, on the pain here. That’s how I came up with it, in fact!” And he winked, as if it was something to be proud of.

“Okay, listen,” Orion said, now realizing that no, these two were not going to understand the point he was trying to make unless he outright told them. “First of all, Jesus was born a _long_ time ago, like over two thousand years ago.”

Kiel waved him off. “So I may have been a little off with my calculations.”

Orion scowled, but held back the urge to yell at him for his idiocy. “Second of all, cameras weren’t even invented over two thousand years ago.”

“Maybe in _your_ world,” Kara pointed out, “but _this_ is the nonfictional world! They could’ve had cameras back then!”

Orion glared at her. “Were cameras invented over two thousand years ago in _your_ world?”

She hesitated, rubbing the back of her neck, clearly embarrassed. “Well, no… but just because our worlds didn’t have cameras two thousand years ago doesn’t mean the same is true with the nonfictional world! Come on!”

Excited, she and Kiel started running down the streets of the town, probably to find the oldest building, however they were planning on figuring that out.

Orion sighed. These two were going to be the end of him. Shaking his head, he started jogging after them. Better stay with them before they did something _too_ stupid.

“So which one do you think is the oldest one here?” Kara asked Kiel as the three of them walked through the streets of Bethlehem, Orion lagging behind.

Kiel brought a hand to his chin, tapping it. “Well, Charm considers the buildings in Magisteria to be very old, so maybe find one that looks the most like a Magisterian building!”

“All right, then!”

“This is probably better than my first idea where we go around collecting any poop we find to determine who the Caganer was.”

Orion gagged. Gross.

Kiel and Kara, of course, didn’t notice, too busy searching for the oldest building.

The journey around Bethlehem honestly wasn’t that bad. While Kiel and Kara looked around for whichever they would determine to be the oldest building in the town, Orion actually took the time to admire what he could see. Honestly, whenever he got the chance, he’d definitely visit the place again, without all the poop stuff.

He silently sighed. The situations he got into with Kiel and Kara.

After some time of walking along the streets, the sun now having lowered to just above the horizon, Kiel pointed excitedly at one building, a simple store sitting at the corner of the street on the other side. “That one!” he exclaimed. “That’s _gotta_ be the oldest building!”

It… didn’t look that much older than the other buildings around it, to be honest. A little decrepit? Sure. But not that much.

That didn’t seem to matter to Kiel and Kara, though. The dark-haired magician and the pink-haired time traveler started sprinting across the street towards it, Orion sighing. Again.

He was so tired of this.

He quickly caught up with the two of them inside, who were already asking the person at the counter if they could look at the camera footage.

“Please, ma’am, it’s really important!” Kara insisted.

“It’ll be super quick!” Kiel added. “Promise!”

The woman at the counter rolled her eyes, but eventually complied, probably just seeing them as some harmless kids goofing around.

“Come on, Orion!”

He quietly followed them to the back of the store, where they were at a computer monitor watching some footage of the front of the store. The woman left them in the room to continue running the store, Orion wishing he could join her instead of joining whatever Kiel and Kara were caught up in. Nothing seemed to be happening on the screen, aside from people passing the store, and occasionally walking in and out of it.

“Hm, we’re gonna have to go way back,” Kara said, rewinding the footage.

Kiel nodded, his eyes not leaving the screen as they now watched the days recorded playing backwards. “Yeah, like ten years back.”

Orion rolled his eyes, but withheld from making a comment this time.

The three of them stood there in silence as the footage continued to roll backwards, Kara now starting to speed it up. (She really wasn’t a patient type. But Orion wasn’t going to complain about that, the sooner they got this over with, the better.)

Minutes passed, however, and there was still nothing interesting.

“This is taking forever,” Orion quietly complained.

“Well, it would’ve gone faster if you let me use my timewatch to go see who the Caganer was!” Kara retorted.

“Knowing you, it wouldn’t have been that straightforward.”

Kara just huffed, but said nothing. She just tried to rewind the footage faster.

He wasn’t sure how long had passed, but eventually, the camera footage refused to go back any further, stopping somewhere around four weeks ago.

Kara groaned, hitting the heel of her palm against her forehead.

“Guess anything after four weeks gets deleted,” Orion commented out loud.

“That’s what they _want_ you to think!” Kiel suddenly exclaimed. “They just don’t want us knowing who the Caganer was!”

What on Earth was Kiel talking about?! “Who’s ‘they’?”

Kiel shrugged with a wink. “I dunno. It just sounded cool.”

Orion held back a groan. Why did he put up with Kiel again?

The three of them left the store, Kara thanking the woman for letting them go through the camera footage as they did so.

“Welp, that was a total bust,” Kara told the boys dejectedly as they walked back down the streets of Bethlehem. “We are definitely not any closer to finding out why the Caganer became a thing in Spain.”

“Well, let’s just get back home and think of another plan!” Kiel told her with a wink. “We’ll figure this out!”

Orion didn’t hold back his groan this time. They'd have to use the fake passports again. Just thinking about doing it again made his stomach churn.

“Come on, let’s get this flight over with,” he told the other two.

Before he could step any further, though, Kiel grabbed his arm, stopping him.

“Oh, we’re not taking any pain back,” he said with another wink. He linked his other arm around Kara’s, grabbing one of his wandknives from his belt as he did so. He waved it a little in the air as he muttered some magic word nonsense, and in the blink of an eye, the three of them were back in Kiel’s nonfictional home. 

Orion blinked a few times, processing what had just happened.

“You mean we could’ve _teleported_ to Bethlehem this whole time?!” Orion yelled, yanking his arm away from Kiel.

“Eh, not really,” Kiel shrugged, unlinking his arm from Kara’s. “When you teleport with magic, you need to know where you’re teleporting very well, or else you might end up somewhere you don’t want to be.”

Orion groaned. Again. How aggravating could one person be?! God, the whole thing plus the fourteen-hour-flight had him exhausted. 

“I’m going back to Jupiter City,” he grumbled, making his way to the front door. He needed a break from everything right now, especially this whole Caganer crap.

(He inwardly groaned at that accidental pun. He _really_ needed a break from this.)

“All right, but we’re on for continuing the Caganer mystery tomorrow, right?” Kara asked as he walked away.

He didn’t answer.

He just simply shut the front door and left.

* * *

The three of them were absolutely determined to figure out how this whole Caganer thing started! Or at least, Kiel and Kara were. Orion kept saying he wanted nothing to do with it, especially after the whole thing where they actually went to the place Jesus was born, but Kiel was pretty sure he wanted to solve it, too. Who wouldn’t?

Well, maybe Charm, but that was because she was Charm.

There wasn’t much they could find, but any small evidence that they _did_ manage to discover, Kiel added it to a wall in his nonfictional home that he decided to dedicate to the mystery. Several bits and pieces of theories were pinned onto it, Kara having connected some of them with red string. Kiel had no idea what the red string meant, but it definitely made the wall look cool.

“It’s been almost a week!” Kara cried out, banging her fists in frustration against the wall. “And we _still_ don’t know how the Caganer started!”

“I tried asking Charm if she could use some sciencey thing to help us,” Kiel said, “but she just walked away and told me to leave her alone.” 

Maybe he shouldn’t have asked her while she was in the middle of some important meeting or something in regards to Magisteria and Quanterium. Eh, oh well.

“As she should,” Orion replied, his arms crossed. “I should’ve done that the moment Kara brought this dumb thing up.”

“Maybe we _could’ve_ figured it out sooner if—”

“For the last time, Kara,” Orion interrupted her, “we’re not pooping anywhere except in toilets, and we’re not asking anyone to poop for us, your suggestions are just gross!”

And suddenly, Kara groaned loudly, dropping to her knees, her head now in her hands.

Kiel almost took a step back, blinking. He had never seen her this upset before. 

He looked to Orion, silently asking him what to by giving him a wink. Orion just stared intensely at him in response. 

Okay, he’d better let Orion know as soon as possible that he wasn’t exactly a mind reader. But not now. Now, he had to help comfort one of his best friends.

“Hey, we’ll figure this out eventually,” he told Kara, getting on his knees as well.

She looked up at him, wearing the biggest frown he had ever seen her wear. “It’s been a week,” she mumbled. “We’re nowhere near figuring it out.”

He shrugged with a wink, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Hey, even if we never solve it, we had a fun time these past few days together just trying to solve it, right? I mean, we even took a pain to Jesus’ birth place!”

Kara blinked, then let out a chuckle, which made him grin wider. “Yeah, that _was_ pretty fun!” she said with a smile.

“Why _is_ solving this Caganer thing so important for you, anyway?” Orion asked, kneeling next to the two of them.

Kara blinked, her blue eyes now unfocused. “Uh, I don’t know…” she admitted. “Honestly, my brain sometimes fixates on weird stuff. It’s… kinda ridiculous now that I think about it!” She ended up laughing, Kiel joining her; hey, her laugh was pretty infectious!

It didn’t last very long, however. Once her laughter died down, she was frowning once more. “Still sucks that we never figured out why the Caganer is a thing, though…”

The three of them were silent for a few moments, before Orion sighed, shaking his head. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he said, pulling out his phone.

Kiel and Kara quietly watched as he tapped his phone screen a few times, before turning it around and showing them. On the screen was an image of a rather plain looking Caganer from that nonfictional Nalwork search thing. “Kiel, think you can use your magic to copy this in real life?”

Kiel could feel his smile practically growing wider than his face. “Of course!” He grabbed one of his wandknives from his belt, focusing on the image and muttering a spell. Within seconds, an actual, Caganer figurine was sitting on the floor in front of all of them.

The grin on Kara’s face made him feel warm inside.

“Look, we couldn’t figure out the whole Caganer thing,” Orion told her, “so I figured having one would help make you feel a little better.”

Still grinning, Kara delicately picked up the figurine with both of her hands. “I love it!” she exclaimed, the smile never leaving her face. “I love it, I love it!” She quickly threw her arms around him; of course, being Orion, he looked annoyed about the physical contact as usual, like how Charm usually looked at Kiel. This time, though, it was only for a moment. He just rolled his eyes, giving the slightest of smiles.

Seeing Orion like this, Kiel winked at him, wrapping his own arms around the two of them and joining in on the hug.

Once Orion was done with all the hugging (which was only a few seconds), they pulled away, Kara still holding onto the Caganer as if it was now her most prized possession. (And honestly? It probably was. Kiel couldn’t blame her.)

“You know what?” Kara said, still looking at the Caganer in her hands. “I think we should keep this here. Partly because I don’t think my parents will let me keep this in the house, but mostly because this is where this Caganer thing started. Not to sound all corny, but it can, like, represent our friendship or something after our whole thing with it.”

Kiel winked again. “I will gladly show off this new symbol of our friendship in this house.”

Orion just made a face. “That is the worst way to symbolize our friendship.”

Technically not an objection.

With some extra images that Kara and Orion showed him of the Nativity set (with some complaints from Orion about how it wasn’t even close to “kiss mass,” whatever that was), Kiel had created a full Nativity set to go with their Caganer, all of it proudly displayed by the front door. The three of them were grinning as they admired the sight (though Orion would later deny that fact, no matter how many times Kiel and Kara would tell him that yes, he _did_ smile with them).

“Definitely no way we can forget this whole Caganer adventure now,” Kiel said out loud.

“Not like we could forget it, anyway,” Orion muttered.

And how could they when they were reminded of it every time they passed the Nativity set? Kiel surely couldn’t. He and Kara especially loved to point at it every time the two of them were at the nonfictional home together, laughing and remembering that one week they tried to solve the origin of the Caganer. (Orion, however, just ignored it, no matter how hard they tried to get him to look at the Nativity set.)

Sucked that the others missed out on the adventure, though, because they were incredibly confused looking at the Caganer whenever they came over.

Oh well. Their loss.


End file.
